Do not interper all misses as missesThis is certainly not a silver bullet but it can help especially with
bad feelings. Depending on how close was attack roll to AC, there could be a hit with no damage accompanied with an animation (sword hit a shield or helm, sparks, dust, chips) or sound (taunts, shouts). For example we could have some uniqe shout after 4 misses in a row.
Pseudo-random die roll distributionThis is implemented especially in competetives games like Dota 2 (see
their wiki). In this implementation the event's chance increases every time it does not occur, but is lower in the first place as compensation. Results are more consistent but statistically the overall probability is same as true random generation.
Simultaneous enemy AIThis is another indirect method. The miss itself is not
that bad if we can strike again as soon as possible. This may be a reason while some people still advocates for RTwP. In RTwP everything is happening simultaneously and you need to wait for next attack roll 6 seconds in max. But in turn-base mode, when every enemy takes their turn in series you may wait a whole minute! Since RTwP is off the table let at least grouped enemies play their turn simultaneously.
Larger party and smaller groups of enemiesThis is controversial proposal and may go either way, but since we are brainstorming ideas here lets include it. The general idea is to reduce the ratio of player controlled characters vs number of enemies to allow player simply
play more often. And also elevate the party concept of BG. Maybe your 3 warriors missed this turn and you main wizzard is out of spell slots, but you Arcane Trickster still has a Magic Missile to not risk another miss.
And that is all I have at the moment. What are you thought about those solutions and about the analisys itself? Did I make a mistake maybe?
1)Did anyone tell you you should work in the game industry? ^^ I'm not able to comment on you making a mistake when it comes to the data interpretation, I used to work on way easier problems than the analysis you did here. But since I took part in most of the discussions here please see my comments below.
2) Remember any conclusion reached in this thread must be added to the general feedback or separately as one of the mega-threads ! Otherwise Larian will probably never see it.
3) My comments.
Do not interper all misses as misses
A)I think that's a very important point and I love that you came up with it. It doesn't solve the problem per see but it does both bringing the game closer to tabletop ( where a miss is interpreted by your GM) and gives more immersion. I love the idea of more outcomes added to miss than simply nothing happening.
B) One of the cheapest and easiest way to achieve it is to add voice lines on miss /critical miss. It serves the purpose you described here aswell as several others after me. Like bounding more to your character's personality.
Pseudo-random die roll distribution
This might decrease the general frustration of too many misses one after another but will effectively be a major buff for players who are already powerfull due to other factors like sleeping being what it is right now.
Simultaneous enemy AI
I've talked about it in a different thread about combat lenght. The thread itself was very generalistic but we came up precisely with this idea in the end. Despite the " issue with tracking enemy movements" it doesn't require a swap to RTwP, is an realistic upgrade to TB in general and I simply think it's perfect when it comes to reducing the wait time for players.
If 2 of my characters can act, then 3 enemies and then 2 of my characters again the 3 enemies can act all at the same time. In the end what you need to track is your hp not what the enemy does one after another.
Also if done well enought it's a huge upgrade to TB games in general I think.
Larger party and smaller groups of enemies
A Larger party will result in more actions made by the player( side note:good thing!) but due to more permutations of skills, buffs the player even more. While it counters the misses I think the power creep resulting in this requires more enemies or stronger enemies to begin with which would itself give the average amount of misses per combat at the same rate.
I see mainly issues with this solution as it doesn't solve the right problem. Not even speaking about the fact it increases the combat lenght which was an issue itself mentioned multiple times. I wouldn't bring this up as a solution to the reduction of misses amount even if it COULD be one admitting the enemy power is balanced vs 4 players.
In conclusion I would concentrate on :
Simultaneous AI + Misses interpretation as a solution to the problem.
